Take THAT, Arizona!

I had some time between appointments for work yesterday, so I went for a walk through the coulees. I headed up this path:
All of these pictures I'm showing you were taken with my phone, so please forgive the poor quality. Anyway, as I was walking up the path, I saw something growing on the north slope:
Cactus! Since Mum's always going to Arizona and taking pictures of cacti, I figured I should do the same on my quick little Lethbridge adventure. I also took this picture of the High Level Bridge:
And I took this picture. You can see Highway 3 in the distance close to where the turn-off you take to get to Picture Butte:

Banana Flower

I went to bed at 1:00 Sunday morning. Being tired, I fell asleep immediately. An hour later, Avril woke me up by saying, "I think I'm in labour."

"Are you sure?" I replied, remembering two Sundays previous when we drove to the hospital in Lethbridge only to get turned away because it was false labour. She was sure, so we called Avril's mother to come watch the boys. As we waited for Evelyn to drive to Picture Butte from Stirling, I watched Avril having contractions on the couch and became sure myself that it wasn't false labour.

We arrived at the hospital at about 3:15 AM. The nurse checked her in the room where the pregnant ladies first go, and we ended up not staying in there for more than five minutes before she moved us into a delivery suite. I settled into my chair and prepared myself for a few hours of labour, figuring this would be over quicker than our first two babies. I figured the baby would arrive sometime around 8:00 or 9:00.

At around 4:25 AM, the doctor on call (Avril's regular obstetrician was away for the weekend) came in and popped Avril's water because it never breaks on its own. As he was leaving the room, he said, "I'll see you in a little while. It won't be much longer." I figured that Avril would go into the pushing phase of labour in an hour, and that the baby might be born at 6:00 instead of at 8:00 or 9:00. That would give me some time to read from my new book.

Before I could go digging in Avril's bag for my book, Avril started screaming. Concerned, I stood up and went to her side to hold her hand. She kept screaming. "Don't push," the nurse said. "There's still some cervix there." Avril screamed something along the lines of "I'm not! I can't stop!" The rest of the screaming had no words. One of the nurses ran out the door and called the doctor back.

I was looking at Avril's face this whole time. As the doctor rushed into the room, the nurse who had been in charge said, "We have a head."

Oh, I thought to myself. The baby's head is crowning. I looked down in time to see the doctor pull my daughter completely out. When the nurse said we had a head, she didn't mean that the head was crowning; the head was out! Less than ten minutes after the doctor popped Avril's water, Hannah Rose MacKenzie, my first daughter, was born at 4:32 AM on March 28, 2010.

Here's how my thoughts went starting from the time Avril was screaming: Oh, man, this is going to be a tough labour. There wasn't time for an epidural. If she's in this much pain now, I don't know how she's going to la-- Oh! Oh, she's done! Well...great!

She was 7 pounds and 10 ounces. Her head was 35.5 cm around and she was 54 cm (21.3 inches) long. Our smallest baby yet. Also, she has a bunch of dark hair, which just looks weird to me. Have you ever seen the SNL commercial for baby toupees? That's what it reminds me of, because I'm used to bald babies.

We brought her home this afternoon. She and Avril are both fine. Avril is actually amazed at how well she's feeling. The only thing wrong with Hannah is a little blood blister on one of her fingers that she was born with.

Some people may recall that when we were thinking up names, we were going to spell it Hanna instead of Hannah. There are three reasons why we changed our minds:

1. We didn't want everybody spelling her name wrong for the rest of her life.
2. I thought that a palindrome name would be cool.
3. Nickelback is from Hanna, Alberta.

Enjoy the pictures, and feel free to steal them.

Birthday Season

Birthday season is upon us here in the MiKenzie household. First up was my birthday on March 20. I turned 32.
I made my own cake for two reasons: 1) Avril is very, very pregnant, and 2) I like to make Mum's black midnight cake. Alex and Kenny, of course, had to help me. I didn't let the cream filling cool for long enough, so the finished cake didn't look as pretty as it could have, but it sure tasted good.
Then, on the 24th, it was Lex's 2nd birthday.
He got cars.
Avril's birthday is on April 9, and we'll have a baby born sometime between now and then.

New Roommates

It's funny. When a man gets fired, chronicling his life is one of the last things he wants to do. Hence the complete abandonment of my blog for well over a month. Pretty much everyone knows that I lost my job in Picture Butte, so I won't dwell on it. Let's just say that I'm now in Edmonton, returning to Photo Gift World as the Retail General Manager. I'm living in Sara's basement while Avril and the boys remain in Picture Butte for now. They'll move up here to join me sometime in the new year.

Sara was nice enough to give me her old camera, which is a very nice one, so I figured now that I have a camera nicer than my cell phone, I should return to blogging.
The house that Sara and her family live in is the house that my parents lived in when I was in my early 20s. I'm back in my old room, the last room that I ever stayed in while living with my parents. The walls are even still the same colour that I painted them back in 2001, and some of the furniture (the night stand in the above picture, for instance) is even the same furniture I had used since I was 13. I must admit, it's rather strange. It's almost like I've slipped back through time: I'm living like a single man in my old room with my old furniture in my old hometown.

Although, there is one difference this time: I have roommates.
Sara's two young cats, Percy and Mickey, get locked downstairs with my every night, and they like to keep me company.
Like I said, they're young cats, just barely out of kittenhood, but they've begun to mature. I've caught them starting to have sex on my bed three times now. One of those times was at 5:00 in the morning, and they were on my legs. I break them up each time, but who knows what they're up to when I'm not around? I reported this to Sara. Poor Percy doesn't know what's in store for him now.

Pooh Bear King

When I was a young boy, I had a Winnie The Pooh teddy bear. It was one of my most cherished stuffed animals. My older brother, Rob, took his duties as a my only brother seriously. In other words, he was sure to tease me often. I was a good-natured kid, and I always knew that his teasing was in good fun, but I reacted as a typical child would react: it bothered me. Anyone in my immediately family remember Rob drowning in invisible bas? Why did the non-word "ba" bother me so much? Because I was little boy enduring harmless teasing from my big brother, whom I loved, and I knew he loved me in return.

Anyway, getting back to Winnie The Pooh. One of Rob's regular forms of teasing was the Pooh-Bear King. He would take Winnie The Pooh and give voice to a dark, tyrannical side of the lovable Disney character that you never see in the cartoons. Always yelling and slamming his head against the wall. Angry, angry little bear. I look back on the Pooh-Bear King with fondness. I feel lucky that my big brother's teasing was not only good-natured, but very unique and creative. The reason I'm thinking about the Pooh-Bear King right now is because I just stumbled over the following picture online:

Five Years

September 17, 2009 marked the fifth anniversary of my marriage to Avril. A lot has happened in those five years. We've lived in seven different homes in five different towns. We have two wonderful sons and a third child on the way. I started and completed college, worked in two motels, and now I'm an assistant municipal administrator. On the whole, it's been a great five years, and I love Avril more today than on the day I married her.
To celebrate, Avril and I spent the weekend at her parents' cabin near Crowsnest Pass. Don and Evelyn were nice enough to watch Kenny and Alex for us, so we got to have some quality alone time. On Saturday, we went to see nearby Lundbreck Falls. We forgot to take our real camera, so all of the pictures are fairly poor quality because they were taken with my phone. Please, please forgive me. I'm so, so sorry.
The falls were beautiful, and the weather was nice. We had fun. We got to look from several different angles, too, and we climbed right down into the canyon they were in.
The rest of the weekend was blessedly relaxing. I did all of the cooking. I love cooking over an open fire. Those steaks were amazing! We took a canoe out on the lake, but after five minutes, a strong wind came up and blew us back to the dock. We read, played board games, I did crossword puzzles while Avril did Sudoku, and we watched The Office season 5 DVDs on my laptop.

Summer Rolls On

With no kids in school, September is still summer for us. Yeah, I'm working, but it's still hot and the kids are always home.

Saturday was the Parkinson's Society Superwalk. Since Evelyn and Afton work for the society, and since Parkinson's greatly affected their family, Avril and I usually attend and volunteer at the registration table. The Superwalk was a success this year. Kenny got the second place prize for most pledges collected for children.
Later that afternoon, we went to Afton's house and met up with Noah and Heidi to play Rock Band: Beatles. We took the kids out back to run through the sprinkler. The younger kids weren't very into it, but Kenny and Isaac had a blast. Alex got sprayer once and didn't enjoy it, but he loved watching the older boys getting wet.
Oh, by the way, Rock Band: Beatles is awesome.